A hybrid genetic algorithm/mathematical programming approach to the multi-family flowshop scheduling problem with lot streaming

This paper presents a hybrid genetic algorithm/mathematical programming heuristic for the n-job, m-machine flowshop problems with lot streaming. The number of sublots for each job and the size of sublots are directly addressed by the heuristic and setups may be sequence-dependent. A new aspect of the problem, the interleaving of sublots from different jobs in the processing sequence, is developed and addressed. Computational results from 12 randomly generated test sets of 24 problems each are presented. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.